Music Pirates

I read an interesting article recently, where according to the CEO of Universal Music Group (UMG), the iPod and Zune music players are repositories for stolen music. UMG have recently brokered a deal with Microsoft so that for every Zune sold, Microsoft will pay UMG $1 as compensation (this was the only way Microsoft could get UMG’s catalogue on the Zune store) for all the music that UMG believes Zune users will steal. It is claimed by UMG that 50% of the money will go directly to the artist. Interesting idea, but what about artists signed to labels other than UMG, do they get a cut? I would suspect not, since I see this as UMG feathering their own nest trying to make money wherever they can, and ensuring that the MP3 hardware makers are under their control.

What I do not like about this deal is that UMG does not care if you bought all your music legitimately you still owe them money, as they believe if you own an MP3 player then you download illegal music, and are labeled by them a thief, as you are denying them of money. I believe this deal amounts to theft, because it is not right to penalise someone who has bought all their music legitimately. One of the reasons I think UMG is doing this, is to try and persuade people to purchase it’s CD’s rather than download MP3’s as they makes money for them that way. Paying 79p to download a track from iTunes I suspect doesn’t make a lot of money for the artist, or record label, once the cost of providing the download is taken off.

I hope that when Microsoft starts to sell the Zune in Europe it does not broker a deal with UMG or any other music label, as it is not right. People have the right to purchase the music they want to, be that MP3, CD etc, and listen to it either on a CD player or MP3 player.

Apparently this is not the first time that Universal have tried to make things go their way, apparently in 1984 they sued Sony because they felt the Betamax video player infringed their copyright (it didn’t and they lost). Also in 1999 they got fined £91 million after being accused of CD price fixing.

There is a campaign on the internet at http://boycottumg.com/ suggesting that people boycott purchasing music by a UMG artist, to make UMG aware that not all MP3 player owners are thief's / pirates.